I fixed a used broken ibook but they had a password! Help

[Star Destroyer]

Hi everyone,

As some of you might have seen in marketplace i was looking for broken ibooks, well i bought a used one with a logic board fault and fixed it, but the old user had one account and a password on it.

Is there anyway to get passed this password? I wouldn't mind reformatting it and putting my copy of Tiger on it. So any possible way to get thing ACTUALLY usable would be the best.

I dont have its original start up disk as i bought it used and as-is condition from a local place that sells junk parts and comps. I do have my Tiger disks from my macbook, i would want to put those on it.

Please can someone help i wanted to give this to my girlfriend for her birthday, and all i need is to get past the password to reformat!

Thanks,
Star

 

[J@ffa]

Is there anyway to get passed this password? I wouldn't mind reformatting it and putting my copy of Tiger on it. So any possible way to get thing ACTUALLY usable would be the best.

If you restart from a Tiger install disk, there's a password reset utility in, I think, the Utilities menu (or one of the menus). That will let you access the files.

I dont have its original start up disk as i bought it used and as-is condition from a local place that sells junk parts and comps. I do have my Tiger disks from my macbook, i would want to put those on it.

You can't use your MacBook discs in the iBook, as they're Intel-only. Besides, even if they were PPC, they're still locked to the MacBook. You need a retail copy of 10.4 to do any of these two things.

HOWEVER... you don't need the old user's password to format the drive. Simply booting from a Tiger install disc by putting it in and holding the 'c' key during bootup will bypass the OS entirely, and you can go to the same Utilities menu I mentioned earlier and format the drive with Disk Utility, and then install as normal.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Do you mean iBook or MacBook? If you fixed a MacBook, what I said applies, but obviously allows you to use the discs from your MacBook to install and reset passwords and whatnot. As an addition to these instructions, if you reset a user's password, the keychain remains locked, which can be a pain.

 

[Star Destroyer]

No i fixed a G3 ibook, i bought it broken and used, it was said to have that logic board problem. But i i was playing around inside and got it to work.

I tried using my macbooks tiger install discs, but it wont work. I get a whole of problems that come up in text with the power icon in the background saying i need to reboot.

The text is a lot of technical stuff, but what the first line says is something to the effect of "Unable to find driver for this platform: Powerbook4,3"" then a bunch of numbers and technical stuff and the last line says "Kernal panic: we are hanging here..." then i restart.

So it leads me to believe i have to have a PPC startup disc. Is that the case?

 

[J@ffa]

So it leads me to believe i have to have a PPC startup disc. Is that the case?

Yeppers.

Given Leopard was just released, you might be able to get a copy of Tiger from eBay or somesuch quite cheap. Make sure no-one sells you a pirated copy with 'Tiger MAC apple' scribbled on it… that is, if you can't obtain a copy elsewhere.

 

[Brian7490]

No i fixed a G3 ibook, i bought it broken and used, it was said to have that logic board problem. But i i was playing around inside and got it to work.

I tried using my macbooks tiger install discs, but it wont work. I get a whole of problems that come up in text with the power icon in the background saying i need to reboot.

The text is a lot of technical stuff, but what the first line says is something to the effect of "Unable to find driver for this platform: Powerbook4,3"" then a bunch of numbers and technical stuff and the last line says "Kernal panic: we are hanging here..." then i restart.

So it leads me to believe i have to have a PPC startup disc. Is that the case?

IM HAVING THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM. I use my macbook install discs and I get that page that says "Kernal panic: we are hanging here...", so do i need a copy of tiger install discs.